


Galatians 3:28

by TheGreenMeridian



Series: Testaments [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Religious Guilt, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, hickey’s murder attempt is foiled, hurt/comfort but in a scurvy way, more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29329815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreenMeridian/pseuds/TheGreenMeridian
Summary: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.—As both hopes for rescue and his own health fades, Thomas tries to bring peace to his friend and himself.
Relationships: John Irving/Thomas Jopson
Series: Testaments [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2154312
Kudos: 7
Collections: John Irving Birthday Week 2021, The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	Galatians 3:28

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been working on this for fucking EVER, but irvday and rarepair week overlapping felt like a sign I should try and get it finished. That didn’t work out, but I DID notice a natural chapter break so here you go!

When Thomas’ leg was ripped open, and again when it was cauterised and sewn back together, he believed he’d experienced the worst pain a man could suffer short of amputation. What he feels now, though less acute and without the accompanying smell of his own burning flesh, is far worse. From head to toe, he aches. His skin feels sun-blistered and too tight for his shrinking frame, his joints like shards of glass have nestled between the bones. Most cruel is the ever present taste of blood that will not wash away no matter how many times he rinses his mouth or forces water down his failing throat; a constant reminder of how he is disintegrating like the meat in their spoiled cans. He will die here, he knows, laying on the ground beneath weary canvass, or perhaps in one of the boat sleds as he gazes at the empty blue sky above him. His Captain, taking the role of the father Thomas has long imagined him to be, splits his time equally between Fitzjames and himself, and Thomas feels guilty for the burden he has become even as he knows Crozier would hear none of it.

Perhaps it has come for him now in punishment for his cruel prayer. John will be left alone, now. Left to his troubles, left unable to confide in another. He’s considered encouraging him towards some of the other men he knows will understand his pain, but he’s reluctant to add the extra burden to Bridgens, and Peglar too is sick and dying. Of the impromptu congregation of men that had begun to join them as they huddled over John’s bible in the evenings, two had deserted and disappeared across the shale and three had become as ill as he, and the remaining few had given up completely without Thomas’ presence to temper John’s more dogmatic nature.

Harsh light knocks him from his thoughts as a figure enters the tent, and Thomas suppresses the urge to cry out at the pain it causes his eyes. The flap closes and puts him back into comfortable darkness again and his visitor speaks before his sight returns.

“I thought I might sit with you a while, Tom. If you’d like,” John says softly.

“I’m poor company,” Thomas rasps, his weak smile becoming a grimace as he reflexively brushes the hair from his forehead.

John comes to sit beside him, smiling shyly in that way he has that pulls at Thomas’ heart for the uncertainty behind the emotion, and shakes a canteen of water at him.

“Do you need a drink? Should I... should I help you with it?”

He hums his assent and winces as John slips a hand under his head to gently lift him and slowly trickle water through his cracked lips. When John lays him back down on the rudimentary pillow his palm is a mockery of the wounds of Christ, smeared with the blood seeping from Thomas’ scalp. John doesn’t comment, thankfully, though his eyes are wide as he wipes it on a handkerchief. 

“We’ve sent another hunting party,” John says as he settles beside him. “Lieutenant Le Vesconte has taken two men with him, heading east this time. I thought you might wish to join me in praying for their safety.”

It’s telling that John did not say success. They both of them know that success is unlikely, that even if the Lieutenant and his men do find meat to bring back with them, it may well be too late for Thomas. But he nods anyway and lets John take his hand without complaint, happy for the comfort of skin against his own even as it sends shockwaves of pain through his arm.

“Almighty Father, we ask that You watch over our brother Lieutenant Le Vesconte...”

Thomas’ eyes fall closed somewhere during the beginning of the prayer without him realising, John’s voice rippling against him and sending him slowly drifting out to his usual facsimile of sleep. But John coughs and his voice becomes a tremor that washes Thomas back to consciousness.

“I... I ask also that You comfort Thomas and ease his suffering. Lord, if it be Your will, I beg that You heal him from this disease and... and keep him by my side. Save him, as he saved me.”

They whisper the ‘amen’ together, and John’s hand stays tucked in his, more resting there than holding. The memory of stumbling forward with his vision blurring to a pinprick and an agonising throb in his head bubbles up in him, followed swiftly by the ghostly sensation of sticking a knife in Hickey’s kidney as he had John pinned to the cold ground. He can still feel the sticky heat of the blood gushing over his fingers, steam rising from it in the frigid air. Can still see Hickey turning to look at him with surprise and something like respect on his face before coughing yet more blood, the sound of it drowned out by the squelch of Thomas pulling his knife free. He remembers too how John had held his face in gloved hands and forced eye contact until Thomas could stop shaking. They had embraced then, clinging to each other like two men fallen overboard and both sobbing until they could hardly breathe for it.

“Thanks, John,” he says weakly.

John gives him another of those shaky smiles and wets a cloth with water from the canteen. “May I... May I bathe your brow?”

“Please.”

He closes his eyes as John swipes the cloth over him, wiping away sweat and blood, taking whatever hairs have fallen out and become lodged there in the sticky mess. It’s the unrelenting filth of it that makes this illness so miserable, especially for a man so given to fastidiousness as he. He longs to be able to shave again (how cruel it is that his beard stays even as the hair on his head comes out in bloody clumps), and more even than food, he dreams of taking a bath. He wants to feel that cool cloth on the rest of his skin too but even this gentle cleansing of his forehead is painful and he knows he couldn’t move well enough to allow John access to the rest of him.

“What do you miss most of home?” Thomas asks.

John thinks on it a moment. “Spring. I would very much like to see daffodils again.”

“I like them too.” Thomas is long past feeling any shame of his birth; it’s difficult to concern oneself with such things when men of all standings are dropping like flies around them. But he still hesitates before speaking. “My sister sold them, outside the music halls.  
A neighbour used to let her cut them from her garden to sell. Took pity on us after... after mum fell ill.”

Harriett was old enough to have taken a husband by now and he hoped she’d found a good man to care for her, one that would treat her well. She deserved a better life than what they’d had.

“What do you miss, Tom?”

“Warm water. If we make it home I’ll bathe for an entire day. In a real tub, too.”

When John says nothing, Thomas opens his eyes a crack and even in the dim light of the tent he can see a flush and a wetness on his pale cheeks. It breaks his heart, and makes him long for the strength to pull John into an embrace. He’d not let himself notice John. Not let himself admire the slight softness of him when they all still had enough food in their bellies, especially once he overheard John praying for Billy’s soul. But John has such a lovely face, and he’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t caught himself thinking of brushing the pain from John’s conscience with his hands, showing him the beauty that could be between two men. He imagines then how it would feel to kiss John, and tell him that he’s exactly as God made him and perfect for it. As Thomas lets his eyes fall closed once more, he makes his own silent prayer. If God truly does love him as he is, then let them be saved so that he might persuade John of it. Or if he is not to be saved, let John find out for himself that his nature is not an abomination.

A fresh pain blooms in his chest, the sensation making him wonder if it is possible for his ribs to detach from his sternum. It brings with it a sudden and inescapable clarity: he will not live to see Le Vesconte’s return.

”You’re a good man, John,” he rasps. Speaking is fast becoming agonising but he must force the words out. “No matter what you think of yourself, you’re a good man and He loves you as you are, exactly as you are.”

“I wish that were true,” John whispers thickly.

The tears fall freely down John’s cheeks, and anticipating Thomas’ needs, he lifts Thomas’ head again and tips a little water into his mouth, washing away the metallic taste of having forced too many words past his aching lips. Thomas cannot speak any more, and John seems equally mute. But he holds his eye, and it’s more than Thomas expected. When he’s laid down again, his eyes close unbidden and he feels exhaustion taking over, the agony in his bones reaching new levels, and a growing sticky warmth on his calf as his leg begins to ooze again. Not that it ever truly stops anymore. He feels John wipe around his lips, almost weeps as he feels a trembling finger brush a layer of salve over the cracking skin. The unfairness of his situation stings more than it ever has. He’s been mostly sanguine about it all until this moment but Christ, he’s angry now. Angry at Sir John for ignoring the Captain, angry at Fitzjames for not realising the folly of Sir John’s plan to push forward, angry at the creature for taking Sir John before the Captain could go for aid. Angry at God for abandoning them and striking him down with the illness and not Hickey. And at the Captain, too, for not being able to save him.

John gently wipes around his neck, and despite the discomfort it causes him, Thomas relishes the feeling of cleanliness it brings. Maybe John knows how much being covered in sweat and blood and dirt is robbing him of any sense of being human. Maybe John’s just doing it for lack of any real way to help him.

He falls into something closer to sleep than he’s had in a long time and when he wakes, John’s left and it’s Dr Goodsir who’s tending to him with careful hands and a worried frown.

“Ah, you’re awake. How are you feeling, Lieutenant Jopson?”

“Not too terrible,” he lies. “How are your other patients?”

“Oh... don’t you worry about them, let’s just worry about you for now, hmm?” Goodsir smiles, weak and shaky. 

“Doctor. Please, I... I need to know.”

Goodsir pulls his hand away from Thomas’ wrist and back into his lap. “Captain Fitzjames is still clinging on. The scurvy seems to be progressing rapidly in Mr Peglar, too, and John – Mr Bridgens, I mean – is coping with that as well as could be expected.” He sighs and for the first time, Thomas sees him as he is, a young man barely out of his education, confronted with horrors he never dreamed possible and feeling responsible for every death and injury he cannot prevent. More broken than perhaps any of them but soldiering on nonetheless. They carry a similar burden; men promoted to positions of great responsibility out of necessity and tragedy. “So many of the men are unwell, if the Lieutenant doesn’t return with meat—“

“You’ll do what you can for them, I’m sure.”

“I am beginning to understand why Captain Crozier considers you so invaluable,” Goodsir says with quiet sadness.

Already he’s slipping back into a daze, and he needs to ask something of the doctor before he does. In case he does not have the chance again. “Look after John for me,” he mumbles. “Irving, look after him.”

Over the next few days the sickness seems to take him over completely, and moments of lucidity are few and far between. John appears in a half-dream, reading to him from Romans 8, the words familiar to his soul and worn into it like the deep groove that runs down the middle of the stairs at home. The Captain and the doctor feature occasionally, too. He thinks he sees Bridgens at one point, tired and empty-eyed as he eases droplets of water from a rag into his mouth. Lieutenant Little comes for him and tells him he’s proud of all Thomas has done. He can only murmur insensibly to each of the apparitions, but none of them seem to mind. He knows he’s close to death when his mother is by his side in a reversal of how he’d once sat with her. She strokes his hair and kisses his forehead and gives him permission to sleep, and he’s certain he cries then. She understands, of course, the need he feels to have the pain taken away. He’s sure that he’s given in, that the vague sensations he feels are that of his soul slowly making its way to God. But the pain remains, and so he wonders if John was right, perhaps he is damned after all. It’s all but confirmed when he hears John whisper somewhere in the darkness that he’s found blood in his own hair, that he too is sick, and that Lieutenant Le Vesconte and his party are presumed lost. This is his punishment, then. To listen to his friends die, one by one, and be unable to do a thing to save them. Unable even to see their faces a final time before the darkness takes him completely. Maybe poor Private Heather had experienced the same sensation of being at the very edge of reality while the world went on around him. Maybe the blow Hickey dealt to his skull has split open fully and his own brain is now bared to the icy air.

At one point, he hears arguing, and the voices are clearer than they have been.

“No! No, you will save him, Doctor! We have meat now, you can treat him!”

John, he thinks. John’s voice, desperate and angry.

“I’ll do all I can, Lieutenant, I promise you but... you must prepare yourself for the likelihood that it’s too late for him.”

“Give it here then! I’ll do it myself!”

He feels a finger push past his lips, wet with some slimy, pungent liquid. It’s disgusting, and he has the strange sensation of wanting to gag but his body being too weak for the reflex to take place. Over and over, the foul liquid is wiped on his tongue, trickling down his throat as a hand massages and forces him to swallow. He can hear John whispering something to him, words like ‘good’ and ‘that’s it’ and ‘God has sent help for you, Tom’. Eventually he stops feeding him the liquid and gives him water, and Thomas wishes he could force out a thank you but all he has is a slightly louder exhale. John hears it, though, as he takes up Thomas’ hand and holds it between both his own and against his lips, and Thomas can feel his smile.

He’s a little more alert next time, able to huff his displeasure when someone begins dabbing the liquid into his mouth, but he’s still subjected to it. He hears a soft apology as he manages a small sound of protest after the third taste of it. The Captain, now. He knows that gruff voice and much maligned accent, far more pleasing to his ear than the plummy voices of the men that would disparage him. At some point in the feeding, the Captain jokes with him about some of the medicines he’d been forced to take by Thomas’ hand during his own illness, and Thomas feels the suggestion of a smile twitching in the atrophied muscles around his lips when he’s ordered to get well and promised the opportunity to shave his Captain’s face again. His body listens to the command and when John comes a few days later, he’s well enough to crack open his eyes and whisper a greeting, to which John looks so happy he’ll burst into tears.

“You’re awake! Properly, I mean. How do you feel?”

“‘M ok,” he wheezes. “And you...?”

“I’m well! I was... I was starting to come down with it, but they came in time for me.”

“Who?”

“The Netsilik,” John says, giving him that beautiful soft smile again. “A hunting party came across Le Vesconte and he directed them here. God granted us our prayer, Tom, He saved you both.”

Tears erupt from his eyes, and at John’s look of distress, Thomas forces a smile even as the skin of his lips cracks and bleeds. “Happy,” he whispers.

John grins at him, and the effect is such that his cheeks seem as plump and rosy as they had when they had set sail. He’s not seen him smile so heartily since... since his promotion, he realises. When John had beamed with happiness for him. With great effort he lifts a trembling hand towards John’s and is pleased beyond measure when it’s taken. John squeezes it and it hardly hurts at all.


End file.
